As demonstrated, the historical and archaeological record fails to provide any evidence whatsoever that the New Testament story is true. Nor does it bear out important Old Testament tales, such that the religion Christianity is purportedly based on is unsubstantiated as well. In fact, the very notion of the monotheistic Hebrew God, as allegedly depicted in the Old Testament, who could produce a son, is baseless.
It is a common belief that the Hebrew people, beginning with Moses, were monotheists whose one god, Yahweh, was the only true god, as revealed exclusively to Hebrew prophets. These original monotheists, it is believed, were superior to and had the right to destroy the polytheistic cultures around them by killing their people and stealing their towns, booty and virgin girls, which is what “God’s chosen” are recorded as doing throughout the Old Testament. This monotheist versus polytheist scenario is the common perception, but it is incorrect, as the Hebrews were latecomers to the idea of monotheism and were originally themselves polytheists. In actuality, the Hebrews were by no means the originators of the concept of monotheism, as the Egyptians, for one, had the One God at least a thousand years before the purported time of Moses, by orthodox dating. As Wheless says:
[T]his finally and very late evolved monotheism is neither a tardy divine revelation to the Jews, nor a novel invention by them; it was a thousand years antedated by Amenhotep IV and Tut-ankh-amen in Egypt—nor were even they pioneers. We have seen the [Catholic] admission that the Zoroastrian Mithra religion was “a divinely revealed Monotheism” (CE. ii, 156).cxcii
The monotheism of the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism, in fact, is virtually identical to that of Judaism, or Yahwism, which is, in part, an offshoot of Zoroastrianism:
Ormuzd says to Zoroaster, in the Boundehesch: “I am he who holds the Star- Spangled Heaven in ethereal space; who makes this sphere, which once was buried in darkness, a flood of light. Through me the Earth became a world firm and lasting—
the earth on which walks the Lord of the world. I am he who makes the light of Sun, Moon, and Stars pierce the clouds. I make the corn seed, which perishing in the ground sprouts anew . . . . I created man, whose eye is light, whose life is the breath of his nostrils. I placed within him life’s unextinguishable power.”cxciii
Prior to the intrusion of monotheistic Yahwism, the Hebrews were not monotheists separate and apart from their polytheistic “Gentile” neighbors, either before or after Moses. This Hebrew polytheism is why in the Old Testament “the chosen” are constantly depicted as “going after” other gods and why “the LORD God”
himself changes from hero to hero, king to king and book to book. As to the polytheism of the Hebrews and the supposed superiority of monotheism, Robertson says:
There is overwhelming testimony to the boundless polytheism of the mass of people even in Jerusalem, the special seat of Yahweh, just before the Captivity. Monotheism did not really gain a hold in the sacred city until a long series of political pressures and convulsions had built up a special fanaticism for one cult. . . . Monotheism of this type is in any case morally lower than polytheism since those who held it lacked sympathy for their neighbors. Most of the Jewish kings were polytheists. What I am concerned to challenge is the assumption—due to the influence of Christianity—that Jewish monotheism is essentially higher than polytheism, and constitutes a great advance in the progress of religion. . . . If the mere affirmation of a Supreme Creator God is taken to be a mark of superiority, certain primitive tribes
who hold this doctrine and yet practice human sacrifice must be considered to have a
“higher” religion than the late Greeks and Romans.cxciv
The Hebrew polytheism is reflected in the various biblical names for “God,” the oldest of which were the plural Elohim, Baalim and Adonai, representing both male and female deities. In order to make the Hebrews appear monotheistic, the biblical writers and translators obfuscated these various terms and translated them as the singular “God” (Elohim), “the Lord” (Adonai), “the LORD God” (Elohim YHWH) or “the LORD” (YHWH/IEUE). As Higgins states:
In the original, God is called by a variety of names, often the same as that which the Heathens gave to their Gods. To disguise this, the translators have availed themselves of a contrivance adopted by the Jews in rendering the Hebrew into Greek, which is to render the word . . . Ieue [YHWH], and several of the other names by which God is called in the Bible, by the word . . . Lord . . . The fact of the names of God being disguised in all the translations tends to prove that no dependence can be placed on any of them. The fact shows very clearly the temper or state of mind with which the translators have undertaken their task. God is called by several names. How is the reader of a translation to discover this, if he find them all rendered by one name? He is evidently deceived. It is no justification of a translator to say it is of little consequence. Little or great, he has no right to exercise any discretion of this kind.
When he finds God called Adonai, he has no business to call him Jehovah or Elohim.
. . . The fact that Abraham worshipped several gods, who were, in reality, the same as those of the Persians, namely, the creator, preserver, and the destroyer, has been long asserted, and the assertion has been very unpalatable both to Jews and many Christians; and to obviate or disguise what they could not account for, they have had recourse, in numerous instances, to the mistranslation of the original . . .cxcv
The Biblical Writers
Although many people still believe that the Bible is a monolithic product of the Almighty Himself, infallibly recorded by the authors purported, the reality is that
“Moses” did not write the Pentateuch, or first five books, and that the other OT texts are, like those of the NT, pseudepigraphical, i.e., not written by those in whose names they appear. Also like the NT, over the centuries the various texts of the OT were “redacted” many times, which is a polite way of saying they were interpolated, mutilated and forged. As Wheless says of the Old Testament:
It may be stated with assurance that not one of them bears the name of its true author; that every one of them is a composite work of many hands “interpolating”
the most anachronistic and contradictory matters into the original writings, and often reciting as accomplished facts things which occurred many centuries after the time of the supposed writer . . . cxcvi
The Pentateuch, for example, had at least four authors or schools of writers.
Even though they are of different authors, these separate segments, some of which were written centuries apart, were interwoven in a confusing yet clever manner. The oldest section of these books is called “E,” for “Elohist,” so-named because the writer mostly uses the word “Elohim” for “God,” although it should be rendered “Gods.”
The next section is the “Yahwist/Jahwist” or “J” account wherein God is called
“Yahweh,” designated by the tetragrammaton YHWH. The major portion of the Pentateuch was created by “P,” for Priestly, who refers to God mostly as Elohim and less often as Yahweh. The next discernible influence is “D,” the Deuteronomist, who apparently cobbled together J and E, along with the laws of Deuteronomy, then wrote the “history” books that follow, including Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings. The Deuteronomist is fanatically Yahwist and writes his
“histories” of the kings from a biased perspective, judging their reigns based on
whether or not they had “done right in the sight of Yahweh.” Finally, someone or a school called by scholars the Redactor (“R”), possibly the author of “Ezra,” pulled together the various works during or after the “Babylonian captivity” (586-538 BCE).
These various texts and their authors represent different schools of thoughts and influences, as well as competing priesthoods, explaining why the harried folk of the Levant were constantly falling out of favor with their God(s). The Elohist’s stories are often silly and nonsensical, when taken literally, because they actually represent the mythologies of a variety of cultures from Canaan/Phoenicia to Egypt, Persia and India. The Yahwist, who portrays some of the same anthropomorphic myths as E, is, of course, very concerned with the Jealous God, Yahweh, as opposed to the various Elohim. P dispenses with the tall tales and portrays his Elohim, now a unified entity, as very cosmic and impersonal, rather than walking about in the Garden of Eden, for example. D and R are, of course, Yahwistic.
As stated, in order to represent the polytheistic Hebrews as monotheists the biblical writers mutilated texts and reinterpreted history, while the translators used the trick of rendering these many gods and goddesses as the singular “God,” “Lord,”
or “LORD.” For example, the word YHWH, transliterated as Jehovah, appears over 6,700 times in each of the Darby and Young’s Literal (YLT) translations, while it is used only four times in the King James Version (KJV) and not once in the most modern versions such as the RSV and NIV. Of these versions, only the Darby retains the word “Elohim” for “God(s),” and this word almost always is accompanied by
“Jehovah,” even though “the LORD God” was not called YHWH until the time of Moses. In this way, translators have given the appearance of uniformity where there was none.
Elohim
The plural term Elohim appears over 2500 times in the Old Testament but is falsely translated in most versions. This fact of plurality explains why in Genesis
“Gods” said, “Let us make man in our image.” As stated, Elohim refers to both “gods”
and “goddesses,” and its singular form, El, served as a prefix or suffix to names of gods, people and places, whence Emmanu-El, Gabri-El, Beth-El, etc. Even “Satan”
was one of the Elohim, as Walker relates:
In the original wording, Satan was one of the bene ha-elohim, sons of “the gods”; but Bible translators always singularized the plurals to conceal the facts that the biblical Jews worshipped a pantheon of multiple gods.cxcvii
Of the Elohim, Taylor says:
The Jewish Elohim were the decans of the Egyptians; the same as the genii of the months and planets among the Persians and Chaldeans; and Jao, or Yahouh, considered merely as one of the beings generically called Elohim or Alehim, appears to have been only a national or topical deity.cxcviii
The Elohim were in reality a number of “El” gods, such as El Elyon, the “God Most High”; El Sabaoth, the “God of the Heavenly Hosts”; El Chay, the “Living God”;
El Neqamah, the “God of Vengeance”; El Ma’al, the “God Above”; and El Shaddai, the “Almighty God.” El Shaddai was the name of the god of Abraham, or the “God of the fathers,” who was replaced by Yahweh in the 6th chapter of Exodus:
And God spake unto Moses and said unto him, I am Yahweh: and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of El Shaddai, but by my name Yahweh I was not known unto them.cxcix
Charles Potter relates that El Shaddai was later demonized in Psalms 106:37, condemned as one of the “devils”—the Canaanite Shedim, to whom the Israelites
sacrificed their sons and daughters. Psalms 106, in fact, provides a concise chronicle of how the “chosen people” “whored after” other gods, i.e., were polytheistic.
In a somewhat common development of the human mind, which allows for polytheism, pantheism, monotheism and atheism at once, the Elohim became perceived as one “EL.” The word El also represented a deity both male and female, but the later Jews generally interpreted it exclusively as male. El was the sun or “day star,” as well as the planet Saturn, which at one point was considered the “central and everlasting sun” of the night sky. El/Saturn’s worship is reflected in the fact that the Jews still consider Saturday as the Sabbath or “God’s Day.” Furthermore, El is Elias, “the sun god Helios to whom Jesus called from the cross. . .”cc Since El is the sun, the many Elohim of the Bible also represent the stars.
The Elohim were not only Phoenician and Canaanite gods but as “Ali” were originally Egyptian. The Ali were considered the “associated gods” or “members, i.e.
the lips, the limbs, the joints, the hands, etc., of Atum, or Amen, the son of Ptah.”cci Therefore, as in the Indian system, we have a sort of polytheistic monotheism in the Elohim. The “son of Ptah” is also called Iao/Iau/Iahu/Iu, the same as Yahweh.
Therefore, the two accounts of Genesis, the Elohist and Jahwist, may be understood as reflecting the older Egyptian religion: “Thus the Elohim are represented in the first creation of man by the maker, Ptah, and in the second by Iu, the son of Ptah;
and Iu, the son of Ptah, is Iahu-Elohim [the biblical LORD God], who becomes the creator of the second Adam [Atum] in the second chapter of the Hebrew Genesis.”ccii
Baalim and Adonai
The god “Baal” and gods “Baalim” are mentioned dozens of times in the Old Testament, as the Israelites are frequently castigated or murdered by “their own”
priests for “going after Baal.” Like the Elohim, the plural Baalim or Baals were often represented by the singular “Baal,” or “Ba’al,” an Egyptian term combining “Ba,” the symbol of the planet and goddess Venus, with “al” or “el,” the designation of the sun.
Thus, Baal was the name for the sun in the Age of Taurus (Bull), which was ruled by Venus. The Taurean age is one of 12 ages representing the astrological phenomenon called the “precession of the equinoxes,” whereby the sun rising at the vernal or spring equinox is backdropped by a different constellation every 2,150 years. The precession takes nearly 26,000 years to move through the 12 constellations, a cycle called the “Great Year.” The knowledge of the precession goes back many thousands of years and is found around the globe from China to Mexico,cciii reflecting that the so-called primitive ancients were in reality extraordinarily advanced. In addition, when the sun was in Taurus, beginning about 6,500 years ago, the bull motif sprang up in many parts of the world, including the Levant, where it symbolized Baal.
Like the other epithets for “God,” Baal is a title meaning “Lord” or “husband”; it is, in fact, a very old appellation for the Deity, and can be found not only in Egypt but also in India as Bala.cciv In the ancient languages of Ireland and Sri Lanka, “Baal”
means “sun.”ccv Baal is in reality the earlier name of the character later known as Yahweh, as is stated at Hosea 2:16:
And in that day, says YHWH, you will call me, “My husband,” and no longer will you call me “My Baal.”
Walker relates that Baal was “‘The Lord’ among ancient Semites; consort of the goddess Astarte . . . Every god was a Baal. The title was introduced into Ireland via Phoenician colonies from Spain . . . Old Testament Jews worshipped many baalim as past or present consorts of the Goddess Zion (Hosea 2:2-8). Yahweh shared these other gods’ temples for a long time, until his priesthood managed to isolate his cult
and suppress the others.”ccvi And Blavatsky says, “The Baal of the Israelites (the Shemesh of the Moabites and the Moloch of the Ammonites) was the identical ‘Sun- Jehovah,’ and he is till now ‘the King of the Host of Heaven,’ the Sun, as much as Astoreth [Astarte] was the ‘Queen of Heaven’—or the moon.”ccvii The other Baalim worshipped by the Israelites included “Baal Peor,” the “Lord of the Gap,” and “Baal Berith,” “Lord of the Covenant.” Another was “Baal Jehoshua,” also Joshua or Jesus, the “Lord of Salvation,” long before the Christian era.
Another word basically the same as Baal is Adonis, which in the plural is Adonai, a term used for “Lord” over 400 times in the Hebrew bible. Adonis, like Baal and El, is an epithet for the sun.
Yahweh
The attempted changeover from Elohim/Baalim/Adonai to Yahweh “coincided”
with the arrival on the main stage of the Levitical priesthood, as Moses, to whom Yahweh purportedly first appeared, was said to have been a “son of Levi.” Among other things, the Levites were fanatic priests obsessed in moving Israel from the Age of Taurus into that of Aries, the Ram/Lamb. In fact, in Exodus 12 Moses resets the precessional clock by changing the beginning of the year and instituting the passover and “the feast of the lamb and the salvation of Israel by the blood of the lamb.”ccviii
As stated, prior to being labeled Yahweh, the Israelite god was called “Baal,”
signifying the sun in the Age of Taurus. When the sun passed into Aries, “the Lord’s”
name was changed to the Egyptian Iao,ccix which became YHWH, IEUE, Yahweh, Jahweh, Jehovah and Jah. This ancient name “IAO/Iao” represents the totality of
“God,” as the “I” symbolizes unity, the “a” is the “alpha” or beginning, while the “o” is the “omega” or end.
In fact, the name Yahweh, Iao, or any number of variants thereof can be found in several cultures:
In Phoenicia the Sun was known as Adonis . . . identical with Iao, or, according to the Chinese faith, Yao (Jehovah), the Sun, who makes his appearance in the world “at midnight of the twenty-fourth day of the twelfth month.”ccx
YHWH/IEUE was additionally the Egyptian sun god Ra:
Ra was the father in heaven, who has the title of “Huhi” the eternal, from which the Hebrews derived the name “Ihuh.”ccxi
Thus, the tetragrammaton or sacred name of God IAO/IEUE/ YHWH is very old, pre-Israelite, and can be etymologically linked to numerous gods, even to “Jesus,” or
“Yahushua,” whose name means “salvation” or “Iao/YHWH saves.” As Higgins says:
The pious Dr. Parkhurst . . . proves, from the authority of Diodorus Siculus, Varro, St.
Augustin, etc., that the Iao, Jehovah, or ieue, or ie of the Jews, was the Jove of the Latins and Etruscans. . . . he allows that this ie was the name of Apollo . . . He then admits that this ieue Jehovah is Jesus Christ in the following sentences: “It would be almost endless to quote all the passages of scripture wherein the name . . . (ieue) is applied to Christ . . . they cannot miss of a scriptural demonstration that Jesus is Jehovah.” But we have seen it is admitted that Jehovah is Jove, Apollo, Sol, whence it follows that Jesus is Jove, etc.ccxii
Yahweh had yet another aspect to “his” persona, as at some early stage the
“sacred tetragrammaton” of “God” was bi-gendered. As Walker states:
Jewish mystical tradition viewed the original Jehovah as an androgyne, his/her name compounded as Jah (jod) and the pre-Hebraic name of Eve, Havah or Hawah, rendered he-vau-he in Hebrew letters. The four letters together made the sacred tetragrammaton, YHWH, the secret name of God. . . . The Bible contains many